Cobb: Crossing the Rubicon

November 02, 2005

Crossing the Rubicon

I've been too blackified these past two weeks, and now I'm getting ill. The reason is because of my immersion in a shark tank of crude black liberals and wannabe progressives of dubious distinction. My fault for wandering into the cave with my conservative flashlight, like some suburban teen in a horror flick. I'm accustomed to getting dents in the dome, but I'm afraid my old age has given me too much self-respect and now I ain't havin' it.

Yet it is with some bit of surprise that I found myself writing the following bit:

let me suggest that the black man's ability to survive in America depends upon his ability to manage his affairs with dignity in the face of racial prejudice and bigotry. This facility either exists or it doesn't. Joining one party or another has no bearing on the skill. If one develops the skill in earnest, then his facility, like any other, grows sharper with use. I am coming to the point at which my own skill is more exercised by black attacks on my person simply for having joined and defended the Republicans, than by Republicans of any stripe. And it is this facility that is making me weary of you feeble attempts to paint our political ambitions in terms of some subservience to 'the white racist enemy within'.

It is with that that I have crossed the Rubicon and joined the ranks of overexposed black conservatives who speak spitefully of their alienation. It is a condition not to be envied, but edifying nonetheless. Although its liberating qualities have yet to give me peace, I anticipate this soon. Nevertheless, I intend on remaining chilled out. I know who raised me and what I'm supposed to be - I got too much family to heed those threats.

This is very much reminding me of my days of wearing the backwards baseball cap with my email address on it, back in 1993 - before the theory of the Digital Divide was invented. Liberal black professors didn't even realize the sinecure possible pimpin' that angle. So when I recognized their antipathy, I just had to come out and say the Internet was for me and people like me, the rest of yall can take the bus and thus gave up a possibly lucrative gig building websites for black American institutions.

So when the first search engines were finding my stuff on Toni Morrison before Toni Morrison's own stuff (and the SPLC and god know who else), I was off in another direction. Saying I told you so doesn't make me feel good now, I told you so over a decade ago.

And so it is today with the Republican party. I'm doing what I do because that's how I do. Haters are part of the game.

So the identity politics of some black progressives have it in their interests to assert that the normative whiteness of America is not only a fertile breeding ground for white supremacist politics, but that it is a fait accomplit, and that the Republican Party is the party of white hegemonic domination over blackfolks. This thinking is so deeply ingrained that a measured evaluation of the actual policies of the GOP is not even considered reasonable. But most importantly, black conservatives are singularly unqualified to provide that evaluation. Why, because by any number of definitions, we are unsuited to the task of racial meliorization. Speaking for myself, I'm not in it for the sake of 'brokerage politics'. I'm in it because it makes sense to me.

What the black progressives want is a capitulation by whitefolks in the GOP. They want nothing less than a host of apologies and initiatives that will wash America clean of its racist past. The very idea that blacks have to DEAL, is not part of the program. That's why black conservatives (all us Toms) get no play. Because we presumeably don't need the anti-racist mojo of the Left. And to a certain extent it's true - at least I wouldn't mind claiming this to be true of myself. I'm where Ralph Ellison was. Nobody can make me feel less of a man because of my black skin. Nobody. So I walk without fear of inferiority anywhere. Lily white doesn't bend my psyche. So I don't need apologies, nor do I need the apology extraction industry. I don't need white America to be any better than it is for me to succeed.

But I have not lost my facility to be anti-racist. I'm the one who was taking that message to predominantly white areas while others were fertilizing yet unhatched schemes in their pitch-black caves. So it shouldn't come to me as a surprise that I see through their provincial racial prejudices. That doesn't change the fact that it comes as a disappointment. And while I realize that this was the work of a half-dozen or so within an online community of a hundred or so, it's the way I learned this lesson.

As for the rest of black America - those who don't see it my way, what is their fate? I don't know. I don't second-guess blackfolks. It might be appropriate for me to say that I don't care, because I have concluded that African American destiny is bound to America's fate. To the extent that 'black' is not an organization capable of going in another direction, there is nothing to care about. There is no program with which to disagree. There are just self-identified black folks of various political stripes exercising their rights, and sometimes wearing on my nerves. But that's all good because I don't need black America to be any better than it is for me to succeed.

At other such junctures, I would say that it would be about time to write a new version of my "End of My Blackness" essay. Except that my own blackness never ends, it just fails to resonate with whatever prejudicial assessments of blackness predominate at the moment. This is no longer painful. All I need to do to endlessly confound and confuse my critics is to gather them in a room and issue the following two words: Define Black.

I can feel the peacefulness start to creep into my system

Posted by mbowen at November 2, 2005 08:18 AM

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Comments

Great post Cobb, and you hit on some critical points. The reason I ceased defining myself as a conservative is not because of a disagreement with conservative philosophy per se, although I do provide my own little twist on them, but because I didn't want my voice to arbitrarily become pigeonholed by the people who can't get over a title and therefore discount the message.

And central to that message is this statement right here,

"Nobody can make me feel less of a man because of my black skin. Nobody. So I walk without fear of inferiority anywhere. Lily white doesn't bend my psyche. So I don't need apologies, nor do I need the apology extraction industry. I don't need white America to be any better than it is for me to succeed."

This is the failure of the liberal movement and the ignorance of the conservative when it comes to blacks.

The left to perpetuate what they consider the 'struggle towards equality' by necessity have to hyperbolize the racial climate towards the far end of the poor black folk spectrum. This in effect communicates to blacks passively that yes, they are stuck in a rut, and the only way out of that rut is to have some white man in a cape fly in and fix all of the political problems in the world. Reactionary politics, based upon the pitched but fallacious idea that blacks really can't succeed minus white aid. I reject that.

Conversely, the Conservatives fail to acknowledge that although blacks can succeed in spite of, and have through the best shots a white supremecist nation has thrown at them, that it should be success 'in spite of'. That change is produced more rapidly if the in spite of conditions are removed. So everytime a conservative says, "well see, golly gee, Condi made it that means everyone can" and they use this to ward of the very real impacts of entrenched systems based in historic racism, they are saying, "shut up black folks, your history and the effects of that history are irrelevent".

But at the end of the day, I will take the 'shut up blackfolks' over the black folks are inferior and need a white savior any day.

It is only until we acquire a mentality that concedes nothing to white folks, and rest firmly in the unwavering belief that we black folks are equal to if not superior, that we will truly be able to create transformative change amongst the black masses. When you see that occur Cobb, the isolation you feel will be eradicted by the mass exodus to conservative ideals.

Posted by: Dell Gines at November 2, 2005 11:36 AM

Could not have said it better -- although I consider my self a moderate not a conservative (Cause no self-respecting black man is a conservative ;-)

Posted by: Golasso at November 2, 2005 12:12 PM

I don't worry about the 'isolation', because I don't feel in any way diminished by the fact that my ideological company is not black like me. Nor can I say categorically that all who fail to heed the powerful logic of conservatism are doomed to failure and ignomy. And since I'm not an evangelical, I don't feel bad about the situation, merely and mostly disappointed.

At the outset, I said that I expected about 15% of blackfolks to walk over the line to the GOP without changing their values. My hope would be that I could assist in herding those cats. But I'm finding the exercise isn't exactly that. It's like when I moved to NY, I expected to find an upscale black suburban neighborhood equivalent to View Park or Ladera Heights in Los Angeles. What I found was nothing of the sort. Upscale black NY was dispersed residentially, but you could catch them at ... (damn now I forget the name of the club, some woman's name, not B. Smiths, but that joint was cool). The point is the cats can't be herded and probably won't be aggregated, which means that a romantic idea is losing its grip in my head.

I'm Old School and will continue to be. Old School is conservative, unabashedly. So here's to us, and people like us. Damned few left.

Posted by: Cobb at November 2, 2005 01:35 PM